Home > Work > The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook
1 " But if what a novel exudes has not been felt properly or seriously or deeply enough by the writer, then it will show and I will become tremendously bored and irritated. "
― Daniel Alarcón , The Secret Miracle: The Novelist's Handbook
2 " SANTIAGO RONCAGLIOLO: I always start from real emotions and experiences because I think that gives the narrative a lot of force. But the act of writing consists precisely in distorting those facts through fiction, injecting them with lies, until fantasy overtakes reality. The truth is never enough. That’s why I write novels. "
3 " But I also think I have never seen it in a book—the thing I needed to read, just then, and this feeling makes me agitated and restless: it makes me want to write the book where someone could find the thing I needed to read in the last seven or eight years. "
4 " used to plan endlessly, but it never made much difference. Everything happens in the actual writing, for me. Now I just live in a book for three years or so. The computer is always on. I make decisions. I revise decisions. The book falls apart. The book comes together in a different way. The new book falls apart. I hold my nerve. The book I start writing—the easy, confident, public book—always turns fraudulent, for me, and I realize that I have "
5 " Writing is nothing if not solving problems you’ve created for yourself. There are no outside solutions or methods. "
6 " The story always starts with the character. In a way, there’s no decision. If there’s no character there’s no story. "
